Kansas City, Mo. ? They had the best record in spring training and are tied for the best in the regular season.

So far, at least, success has returned to the Kansas City Royals.

“If you’ve been around baseball at all and have a perspective, you know we’ve got 157 games to go,” Brent Mayne said after Kansas City beat the Cleveland Indians 3-1 Saturday. “It takes a bit longer than five games to make anybody shake in their boots, but in any town this start would get anybody’s attention.”

Runelvys Hernandez combined with Jason Grimsley and Mike MacDougal on a two-hitter. The Royals are the first major-league team to start 5-0 after a 100-loss season.

“We have confidence,” Hernandez said. “I think we’re going to be better this year.”

Hernandez (2-0) beat the Chicago White Sox in the Royals’ season opener, a start he was awarded in a coin toss. Against the Indians, he allowed one run and two hits in seven innings, struck out three and walked one. He has a 0.69 ERA in 13 innings.

Grimsley struck out two in the eighth, and MacDougal finished with two strikeouts and a comebacker for his third save in as many tries.

The 5-0 start is the best in the history of the Royals, who were 62-100 last season. Three other teams started 4-0 following 100-loss season — the 1952 St. Louis Browns, 1906 Boston Bean Eaters and the 1899 St. Louis Perfectos — but all lost their fifth games.

“Even the Royals’ world championship team (in 1985) didn’t start out 5-0, but 5-0 doesn’t guarantee we’ll be playing in October,” Mike Sweeney said.

Michael Tucker doubled and tripled, and scored the first two runs for Kansas City.

“We need to keep this moving, keep going along,” Tucker said. “Last year is last year. We can’t do anything about that. For the most part, we are just doing the same things we did in spring training. We’re getting timely hitting and situational hitting, things you need to do to win games.”

Royals catcher Brent Mayne, left, pitcher Runelvys Hernandez, center, and Mike Sweeney congratulate each other. Kansas City improved to 5-0 this season with a 3-1 victory against Cleveland Saturday at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.

Mayne and Carlos Febles, the Royals’ eighth and ninth hitters, each had three hits.

Indians pitcher C.C. Sabathia (0-1) left with two outs in the seventh because of soreness in his left forearm. Sabathia, who dropped to 7-2 against the Royals, gave up eight hits, walked three and hit a batter.

Sabathia said he hyperextended his elbow and will return to Cleveland today to have his arm examined.

“I tried to reach back and get a little extra with my last pitch and probably reached back too far and got too much,” Sabathia said.

Tucker led off the first with a double, advanced on Desi Relaford’s sacrifice and scored on Sweeney’s sacrifice fly.

Consecutive doubles by John McDonald and Milton Bradley tied the score in the third, but the Indians failed to get a hit after that.

“We did a good job of staying in it,” said Indians manager Eric Wedge, who played collegiately at Wichita State. “Offensively, we need to get a little bit better. We were a little bit sloppy at times.”

Tucker tripled in the bottom half and scored on an error when shortstop Omar Vizquel made a bad throw on the relay.

The Royals had two runners thrown out at home. Relaford tried to score from second base on Raul Ibanez’s single in the third inning, and Mayne attempted to come around from first on Carlos Febles’ double in the fourth. Angel Berroa hit an RBI grounder in the eighth.